Larry Richardson's blog is for the birds

I am the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center birder disguised as the Center's Executive Director. This allows my blog to be somewhat mysterious and cloaked in secrecy, so to speak. So if you tell someone about Larry's "birding" blog you are perpetuating the mystery and the confusion.

What is not a mystery is that birding is a whole lot of fun and the Lake Erie south shore is a fantastic place to see an exceptional number of North America's many bird species. It is also no secret that I am driven to see every one of those species and that pretty much describes in a great deal of detail a summary of my personal life or lack there of.

Sunday November 9, 2008 was just another in a series of weekend birding trips around northern Ohio when Jan Auburn and I stumbled upon 7 Cave Swallows at Bradstreet Landing in Rocky River, not far from The Lake Erie Nature & Science Center.

Out of the corner of my eye (there are actually no corners in the human eye) I saw a couple of small songbird size birds over the beach that struck me as starlings, thinking at the same time that those birds aren't starlings. This is a common instinctive contradictory reaction to birds seen out of the corner of one's eye. And in a flash the reality that the birds were swallows came crashing into my consciousness.

So what's the big deal. Swallows are common birds. Not on November 9th in Northern Ohio. September 19th, maybe, but not not 3 weeks later. In fact, only one species of swallows is occurring here so late, and that , my friends, is what is so exciting.

Cave Swallows are a common nesting species in South Texas and along the Mexican border and into northern Mexico. They are a subtropical species that shouldn't like our northern transition from fall to winter. These warm weather swallows started showing up in the northeastern U.S. about 5 or 6 years ago and in Ohio about 3 years ago.

No one seems to know why they show up here so late. It isn't a lot of birds, just a few. Most of them seem quite content to stay where it is warm. It is odd that some migrate so far north when they should be thinking south.

The 2 birds that I hoped to see vanished. Not a good feeling.

Jan, with her infinite patience said lets just wait, walk the beach and they may re-appear. And Re-appear they did.....this time 7 instead of 2. The Swallows did what most rare birds don't do. They were cooperative.

The Cave Swallows verified their identification by flying and perching openly and closely. They were sheltering themselves from nasty west winds and provided many, many photo opportunities. We got the word of the event on the internet which allowed a multitude of birding whose who to get their best ever if not their first look at a true Ohio rarity.

Birding is always fun, interesting and often educational, but for those of us that live for birding it is this kind of experience that really make the endeavor worthwhile. I appreciate the fact that it was a great experience for a lot of birders but my thanks goes out to 7 beautiful Cave Swallows so very far from home.